Lines, intrusive 'physical security' here to stay at airports

Getting through airport security is not likely to get much easier for passengers in coming years – and it's about to get much more personal.

U.S. Transportation Security Administrator John Pistole said he expects that frequently long, sometimes-intrusive security lines will be a permanent reality at U.S. airports.

Pistole said some streamlining of aviation security is in the works, with emerging technologies that one day soon may let people keep on their shoes, keep their laptops in their bags and address other inconveniences.

But the 20th century image of late passengers rushing through an airport in minutes to catch a plane is history, he said in an interview while in Orlando last week. And now officers can see far more than what a metal detector reveals.

"The bottom line is, everybody traveling has a right to expect there is a reasonable amount of tradeoff in terms of security for this process," Pistole said. "Given that, I think it is reality."

Some of the evolving technology also means a new level of intrusiveness that already has upset many passengers.

Body-scanning machines, now being installed at Orlando International Airport and already in use in scores of other airports, form x-ray or radio wave images so that TSA officers can see beneath clothing. Random passengers selected to go through those machines can opt for another approach many find at least as unnerving: detailed body pat downs, including buttocks, breasts and crotches.

The TSA also now is randomly swabbing some passengers' bags and hands and testing for residues of explosives chemicals.

A backlash has begun, said Kate Hanni, executive director of Flyersrights.org, which bills itself as the largest non-profit airline consumers organization, with 30,000 members.

"Since the introduction of the body scanners, there's been a huge shift with how passengers see security," she said. "Passengers are really up in arms."

The trade-off is finding new ways to stop terrorists before they find new ways to get on planes, Pistole said. The most recent example involved Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria, who hid plastic explosives in his underwear and was able to get onto Northwest Flight 253 bound from Amsterdam to Detroit. He failed to detonate his bomb, which could have killed 300 people.

Pistole, who took over the head of the TSA in July, is a former FBI agent who rose in that agency to become executive assistant director for counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence, then deputy director of the FBI. He spoke to the Sentinel while attending a national police chiefs' convention in Orlando.

At the TSA he has emphasized intelligence work as well as having specialized officers in airports trained in behavior detection. Pistole describes a security system that begins with checks against the agency's "no fly watch lists" when someone buys a ticket and extends to the air marshals on planes, who also work for him.

But none of that will replace what he calls "physical security" – the X-ray machines, hand swabs, body scanners and pat downs, he said.

The return of the registered traveler programs – Clear resumes at Orlando International Airport next week – can let some passengers buy their way out of the long lines. But Pistole said the TSA no longer is interested in a strategy the agency once considered — letting such programs help screen passengers as "safe" with their background checks and biometric identifications. That work will be reserved for his officers, he said.

In the near future, new machines may be on the way that can screen liquids, so people can carry them through security. In Europe such machines are to be in use by 2015, but Pistole is not convinced the technology will be ready for the United States. Technologies also are emerging that could allow people to keep their shoes on or their laptops packed, "but, again, I'm not satisfied with it yet," he said.

Hanni said her organization just finished surveying its members and is still evaluating the results but said it is clear the majority now believe aviation security is going too far, without enough gain in safety.

"The general consensus is that flying has become so much of a hassle that if you don't have to fly you don't," she said. "These security measures add time, concerns about radiation [which the TSA dismisses as harmlessly low], about personal rights and privacy, and that thought that everyone is a criminal."

But Pistole said the measures are necessary.

"We have to provide the best possible security," he said, "and right now it still involves a physical security process."